U.S. consumer spending on video games rose from $38.8 billion in 2019 to $51.8 billion in 2025—a $12.9 billion increase over six years—while combined spending on OnlyFans, sports betting, and internet casinos climbed from $1.2 billion to $32.8 billion in the same window, according to venture capitalist and analyst Matthew Ball's annual gaming industry report.

The 2026 edition of Ball's slideshow, hosted on Issuu, frames a stalled console market struggling against an unusually broad field of competitors. Console gaming has plateaued, PC gaming remains bigger than ever without meaningful acceleration, and China and Roblox now drive the marginal growth still visible in traditional games. AAA blockbusters, Ball argues, are losing the attention war against DraftKings, TikTok, OnlyFans, and prediction markets.

What is competing for player attention?

The data Ball assembles is blunt. U.S. viewers watched more than 100 million hours of TikTok per day on average. Total U.S. social media usage passed 500 million hours a day. American consumers spent nearly $5 billion on OnlyFans annually. AI app installs approached 1 billion in the most recent quarter. Online sports betting losses reached $17 billion in the U.S. and $53 billion globally in 2025.

These competing figures concentrate on the same demographic publishers historically targeted for AAA spending: young men, the cohort most likely to buy a $70 console game, subscribe to PlayStation Plus, or pre-order premium DLC.

What does Ball say about how the squeeze works?

Ball frames the squeeze as a notification problem, not a substitution problem. "Video games not only compete with many new interactive substitutes, but video gamers face a barrage of new, interruptive, and irresistible notifications for these substitutes," he writes.

He continues: "Video gaming's post-pandemic problem isn't that players choose to watch TikTok instead of buy a AAA game, or subscribe to OnlyFans instead of buying a PlayStation; it's that on a Friday evening, players are placing a growing share of their time and spend elsewhere."

The implication reaches beyond cancelled subscriptions. Players partition more discretionary time and spend toward alternatives that ping their phones at every buzzer-beater, slot pull, or roulette spin. Players try fewer new games and deepen their commitment to a narrower set of free-to-play titles. External investment has retreated from the sector.

Sony and Fortnite-maker Epic Games have responded by extracting more from their most loyal users through price increases, hardware revisions, and battle pass tuning—a posture Ball treats as defensive rather than corrective.

Where is the growth actually coming from?

Ball identifies two green shoots. China's gaming market continues to expand at a pace unmatched in the West, offering studios an audience outside the saturated North American and European base. Roblox continues to post extraordinary engagement and spending growth among children and teens, alongside its creator-developer economy.

Neither outcome rewards traditional developers the way AAA publishers would like. China's market is geopolitically and regulatorily restricted. Roblox is a closed platform whose economics accrue to its operator and to a small set of top developers, rather than to mid-market studios producing $60 single-player games.

For Ball, the contrast underlines the structural problem: AAA developers face a shrinking pool of incremental dollars, while the platforms capturing new dollars are not the ones most traditional studios serve.

What should studios and publishers track next?

Ball's report ships without a concrete prescription. The operative signals for the next 12 months are clear:

• U.S. sports betting handle trends as North American leagues finalize new integrity partnerships through 2026
• Quarterly Roblox developer payouts, plus any expansion of age-rated publishing tiers
• Whether Microsoft, Sony, or any major publisher breaks the $69.99–$79.99 console price ceiling as unit elasticity declines
• Second-round venture pullbacks in mid-market studios—the cohort Ball's framing puts most directly at risk